Michael Ohl, MD, is studying whether telehealth services can effectively connect rural veterans with HIV specialists, according to a blog post on AIDS.gov.
Dr. Ohl, an infectious disease specialist at Iowa City (Iowa) VA Health Care System, has enrolled around 800 veterans in the Telehealth Collaborative Care study, which focuses on bringing telehealth services to rural areas surrounding Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.
Each of these cities has a VA hospital with an HIV specialty clinic, which rural residents can connect with via videoconferencing at their local VA community-based outpatient clinic. These videoconferences might include HIV pharmacists, psychologists and nurse-care managers who can provide insight and prescriptions to be administered and coordinated at the outpatient clinic.
"We know that compared to their urban counterparts, rural veterans with HIV enter care with more advanced illness, are less likely to receive the latest advances in HIV treatment and have lower survival rates," Dr. Ohl said in the blog post. "We want to change that."